When a real estate agent has a house for sale that looks absolutely awful, but the fundamental structure of the building is solid, they consider it an opportunity for renovation by the buyer. They call these sales "fixer-uppers". When the owner obtains the property, they fix it.
What does it mean to fix something? Well, it's not taking something that is raw materials and turning it into something else. That's an act of creation. Fixing is similar, but fundamentally different because fixing something implies that you're returning it to its full potential.
When applied to people, newborns are raw materials, while everyone else is a kind of "fixer-upper" opportunity as we stumble, make mistakes and so on. Consider an adult who is so flawed that nobody even wants to go near them. Now THAT is a fixer-upper. But we can only view such a person as a fixer-upper because they are fundamentally sound. They are a glorious creation, a human being.
The wise buyer of homes looks to the foundation and structure of the home when considering it as a purchase. The wise man or woman looks to the foundation and structure of the person when considering a relationship with them. Not everyone is suited to stepping into a house that has been ravaged by time and poor care and renovating it back to its full potential. Similarly, not everyone is geared to stepping into the life of another person who has been similarly ravaged. It takes skill and a lot of affection. But the important point to remember is that every person has a rock solid foundation. Housing companies build homes, and they can vary considerably in fundamental issues of quality. But God created all the people, and while we see variation in the outward signs, the foundations are always rock solid.
Many don't believe in the idea that all people have rock solid foundations. They don't believe in themselves and they don't believe in others. There's no need to expect anyone to fix them up, nor should they be expected to fix anyone else up. They can relax into a casual attitude about human beings, making it easy to lie, cheat and steal, because they don't have a notion of the potential of the human being. They only see the surface. They see the shutters hanging off the windows, the peeling paint and the terrible odors.
Such a person feels free to throw rocks at the remnants of the glass windows, or to go stomping through the house, using it for whatever petty purposes they care to. The renovator, on the other hand, can see the house as it once was, or as it could be in the future. They have an image of wonderful possibilities, of new shutters and windows, freshly painted interiors, carpets and flooring, with a happy family and friends filling the rooms with laughter, good food and good times.
Some people simply lack the imagination to assign such wonders to old, dilapidated buildings. Others have never seen such things. They have only seen the broken windows and rooms in disrepair. So too is it with people. Some people have experienced the joys of life, of friends and family, but cannot use their imagination to place the unhealthy people around them into that universe. Other people simply have never witnessed or experienced a healthy home life or the companionship of good friends. These people are simply challenged to understand what can be.
The thing to consider here is what you will choose to do when you see an old shutter hanging by one hinge. Do you pull it down, reveling in your ability to confirm your cynicism about the world, that it is all doomed to destruction and pain? Or do you adjust it upright, confident in the knowledge that every little bit that you do to renovate the world around you is a step back towards goodness and, in fact, normalcy?
When someone cheats you, pity them. Theirs is a world of broken windows and ill-hung shutters, devoid of the ability to imagine anything better. When someone lies to you, mourn the fact that their view of humanity is bereft of a sense of glorious potential in every life that surrounds them. These are the viewpoints that let people treat other people as cattle, as machines, as objects. Such viewpoints are like a disease that moves from unsuspecting victim to victim.
Be strong for yourself and those that you love. Be the house on the street that everyone can admire and hope to emulate. Be the goal of their renovation projects.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
An Ounce of Prevention
The old saying goes "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Traditionally, that observation is applied to the world of health care. We recognize that if we avoid a health problem in the first place, we're saving ourselves a lot of pain and suffering down the road. Dress warmly when it's cold and you won't catch a cold. Eat a proper diet and your body will get what it needs. Brush your teeth and you won't wear dentures.
The rising costs of health care is a popular subject of debate these days. It's really expensive to go from being sick to being well, whether it's a visit to the doctor, dentist, therapist or pharmacy. The more advanced the malady, the more expensive the cure. And that, of course, is the source of the saying; the farther into a disease we get, the more difficult it is to get out again.
This pattern is true of many other areas of our lives, of course. Get a company on the wrong track and it's a mighty difficult thing to get it back on course. Ignore maintenance on your car and it's going to break down, requiring costly repairs. Raise a child the wrong way and it's going to cost the resulting man or woman a lifetime of pain.
It's that last one that I want to underscore. That is, the realization that it really matters how children are raised. After all, they become the adults of tomorrow. Think of adults that you admire and ponder how they were raised. Think of adults that you make you cringe at their antics and ponder their childhoods as well.
Those antics often take individuals into unexplored or ill-defined legal areas. Society's cure for this is to create new laws, to tell people that it's bad to go into those areas. Sarbanes-Oxley is an example of this. Men running a major corporation didn't feel obliged to run their company in a responsible way. They took advantage of the financial situation that they were in, and it resulted in a disaster for everyone involved. Sarbanes-Oxley is legislation that was created in an effort to stop those who would be tempted into repeating something like that. It is one pound of cure.
Another simple example that comes to mind for me is Airsoft. Airsoft is an activity that involves what are referred to as "replica firearms". They look just like real weapons, but are actually spring-powered devices that fire plastic pellets the size of a pea. Mind you, they can sting if you're hit by a pellet, and certainly they can blind you if you're hit in an eye. They're serious, but in no way lethal.
Why does Airsoft come up? Because children and young adults don't have the sense to understand the significance of showing such a replica in public. Taking what looks like an AK47 battle rifle to a high school to show it to friends is just a really bad idea. Running around the neighborhood shooting at each other with what look like real 9mm pistols is crazy. These acts are going to cause people to call the police. The police are going to show up and assume that the replicas are real. They're certainly being brandished as though they were. One boy died and there have been a number of scares.
Society's answer? Outlaw Airsoft. It would seem a simple solution, but it's another pound of cure for us all. Airsoft is also used by countless responsible young adults and adults to play war games. If you're male and you're an American, you played wargames at some point in your life. You probably used sticks as your guns and died inventive deaths, but you played wargames. Airsoft is used to play at a higher level. There's really no reason to outlaw the things - except that some people are fools, scaring other people.
Ultimately, we live in a society where we respond to problems by creating new laws to fence people into an ever-tighter area. Don't do 'this' and don't do 'that' because an irresponsible few among the population went far beyond 'this' and 'that' and produced some intolerable situation as a result. We simply cannot continue to outlaw every action, substance and location to ensure that our society will work. As with anti-biotics, the disease tends to adapt to the cure, making it less and less effective. Disease has a way of finding the gaps, just as the criminally-minded find the loopholes in the law.
It's time for an ounce of prevention. Returning to the Anarchy is Best premise, America needs to focus on training our children to want healthy things and to reject unhealthy things. A big part of that is focusing on altruism. Someone who is concerning themselves with the well-being of the rest of the community - their neighbors - is going to think before they do pretty much anything new.
Before getting into a position of corporate governance, people would consider the merits of the path they were starting down, remaining focused on how their new position would benefit the society around them instead of how it would benefit just them or them and their family. An ever-widening scope of inclusion of others in our thinking will produce the very best from us.
Before buying that Airsoft replica weapon, people would consider how other people are going to react to seeing something that looks like a lethal weapon. They won't stay focused on just their own thrills and joys, but will temper that enthusiasm with a need to respect the concerns of those around them.
How is that done? By putting in a curriculum of philosophy, logic and ethics into the schools. By returning to the days of discipline in the schools, instilling respect for others in the children. The ounce of prevention is simply to place the developing minds of children into an environment that causes them to view the world as a place to contribute to, not get something out of. If parents were doing that, there would be no call for it in the schools, but it's clear that just letting things take a natural course isn't going to do the trick.
John F. Kennedy once inspired this nation with one simple statement: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." That is our ounce of prevention. The law books are far too heavy with pound upon pound of cure.
The rising costs of health care is a popular subject of debate these days. It's really expensive to go from being sick to being well, whether it's a visit to the doctor, dentist, therapist or pharmacy. The more advanced the malady, the more expensive the cure. And that, of course, is the source of the saying; the farther into a disease we get, the more difficult it is to get out again.
This pattern is true of many other areas of our lives, of course. Get a company on the wrong track and it's a mighty difficult thing to get it back on course. Ignore maintenance on your car and it's going to break down, requiring costly repairs. Raise a child the wrong way and it's going to cost the resulting man or woman a lifetime of pain.
It's that last one that I want to underscore. That is, the realization that it really matters how children are raised. After all, they become the adults of tomorrow. Think of adults that you admire and ponder how they were raised. Think of adults that you make you cringe at their antics and ponder their childhoods as well.
Those antics often take individuals into unexplored or ill-defined legal areas. Society's cure for this is to create new laws, to tell people that it's bad to go into those areas. Sarbanes-Oxley is an example of this. Men running a major corporation didn't feel obliged to run their company in a responsible way. They took advantage of the financial situation that they were in, and it resulted in a disaster for everyone involved. Sarbanes-Oxley is legislation that was created in an effort to stop those who would be tempted into repeating something like that. It is one pound of cure.
Another simple example that comes to mind for me is Airsoft. Airsoft is an activity that involves what are referred to as "replica firearms". They look just like real weapons, but are actually spring-powered devices that fire plastic pellets the size of a pea. Mind you, they can sting if you're hit by a pellet, and certainly they can blind you if you're hit in an eye. They're serious, but in no way lethal.
Why does Airsoft come up? Because children and young adults don't have the sense to understand the significance of showing such a replica in public. Taking what looks like an AK47 battle rifle to a high school to show it to friends is just a really bad idea. Running around the neighborhood shooting at each other with what look like real 9mm pistols is crazy. These acts are going to cause people to call the police. The police are going to show up and assume that the replicas are real. They're certainly being brandished as though they were. One boy died and there have been a number of scares.
Society's answer? Outlaw Airsoft. It would seem a simple solution, but it's another pound of cure for us all. Airsoft is also used by countless responsible young adults and adults to play war games. If you're male and you're an American, you played wargames at some point in your life. You probably used sticks as your guns and died inventive deaths, but you played wargames. Airsoft is used to play at a higher level. There's really no reason to outlaw the things - except that some people are fools, scaring other people.
Ultimately, we live in a society where we respond to problems by creating new laws to fence people into an ever-tighter area. Don't do 'this' and don't do 'that' because an irresponsible few among the population went far beyond 'this' and 'that' and produced some intolerable situation as a result. We simply cannot continue to outlaw every action, substance and location to ensure that our society will work. As with anti-biotics, the disease tends to adapt to the cure, making it less and less effective. Disease has a way of finding the gaps, just as the criminally-minded find the loopholes in the law.
It's time for an ounce of prevention. Returning to the Anarchy is Best premise, America needs to focus on training our children to want healthy things and to reject unhealthy things. A big part of that is focusing on altruism. Someone who is concerning themselves with the well-being of the rest of the community - their neighbors - is going to think before they do pretty much anything new.
Before getting into a position of corporate governance, people would consider the merits of the path they were starting down, remaining focused on how their new position would benefit the society around them instead of how it would benefit just them or them and their family. An ever-widening scope of inclusion of others in our thinking will produce the very best from us.
Before buying that Airsoft replica weapon, people would consider how other people are going to react to seeing something that looks like a lethal weapon. They won't stay focused on just their own thrills and joys, but will temper that enthusiasm with a need to respect the concerns of those around them.
How is that done? By putting in a curriculum of philosophy, logic and ethics into the schools. By returning to the days of discipline in the schools, instilling respect for others in the children. The ounce of prevention is simply to place the developing minds of children into an environment that causes them to view the world as a place to contribute to, not get something out of. If parents were doing that, there would be no call for it in the schools, but it's clear that just letting things take a natural course isn't going to do the trick.
John F. Kennedy once inspired this nation with one simple statement: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." That is our ounce of prevention. The law books are far too heavy with pound upon pound of cure.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Prodigy
Artists, composers, architects, inventors and all manner of designers face a challenge that is particularly difficult for the majority of the population: creation. Clearly there are many levels of skill when it comes to new creations. We know of Mozart, DaVinci and Edison. Men who possessed significant capacity to create new things that we can look at and say to ourselves, That's quite a thing. Others are a bit less skilled in their ability to create, producing compositions that are less than beautiful, or inventions that simply don't work. The key to separating the wheat from the chaff lies in the imagination.
Imagination is the key to creation. When someone is creating something new, they are bringing into existence something that didn't exist before. That's true whether a child is building a sand castle or a nuclear physicist is building a new detector for exotic atomic particles. The guiding force during the process of creation is the imagination of the creator, of the designer.
When we imagine, we are creating. In our mind's eye, something new has come into existence. If we are sufficiently talented, we can translate that mental concept into a physical reality. The more completely we can imagine the final result, the more perfect that result will be. I'm quite sure that Mozart could imagine his symphonies in a single thought, with every note and every instrument tied together into a coherent whole. It was not a series of notes to him, but rather a single creation. The fact that it had so many bits and pieces was purely coincidental.
Imagination is required to create, but what is required to critique? Little more than the ability to perceive. If I can see a painting, I can decide whether or not I like it. That's it. There is a certain creative artistry to communicating that perception to others, of course. That is what anyone who authors a written or oral piece must have. The greater the skill, the more coherent the presentation. Yet a critic is not a creator by nature.
I am reminded of a favorite quote of mine of Theodore Roosevelt.
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
Creation is a dramatic thing, as Theodore Roosevelt understood. It is the task of making something that was never there before. That includes changes such as democracy. The founding fathers had a mental image of how a nation could be ruled to produce the greatest good. This is why we call such men visionaries. They see something in the future that could be. They sometimes "dare greatly" to bring about that future.
The greatest creators are the ones who form a single thought, a single notion, that comprises the whole of their creation, then bring that creation into being in one act and finally let it stand on its own merits. No finishing touches, no tune ups, no tweaks. It was complete when it was set down the very first time. It's an exremely rare thing, but it does happen. People who can accomplish such things are usually assigned the moniker "prodigy".
Now consider the universe itself. Modern theory of creation declares that the universe originated in one colossally energetic event, the big bang. Once that event took place, a multi-billion year sequence of events was begun, leading to the present day and continuing into the future for an unknown period of time. Billions of years and countless stars spread across distances so vast that we cannot get our heads around them.
If you believe in God and you wish to appreciate how vast God's ability is, look at your hands. See the intricacies of your fingerprints and the dexterous control that you have of so many things about you. Then look up. At night, we are regaled with the stars. If you have a good imagination, picture the stars as they really are; they are suns as large or larger than our own, at indescribable distances. Around those suns are other planets. Some as large as Jupiter, others as small as the Earth. And on those planets, there may well be other beings who are contemplating their own hands and looking up into the night sky. Trillions of suns with how many planets with how many people, being born, living lives, growing old and dying. Cementing their own dreams into action, changing their own future bit by bit, day after day, year after year, since the beginning of time itself.
Science tells us that God created all that in a moment. I wonder what He was thinking.
Imagination is the key to creation. When someone is creating something new, they are bringing into existence something that didn't exist before. That's true whether a child is building a sand castle or a nuclear physicist is building a new detector for exotic atomic particles. The guiding force during the process of creation is the imagination of the creator, of the designer.
When we imagine, we are creating. In our mind's eye, something new has come into existence. If we are sufficiently talented, we can translate that mental concept into a physical reality. The more completely we can imagine the final result, the more perfect that result will be. I'm quite sure that Mozart could imagine his symphonies in a single thought, with every note and every instrument tied together into a coherent whole. It was not a series of notes to him, but rather a single creation. The fact that it had so many bits and pieces was purely coincidental.
Imagination is required to create, but what is required to critique? Little more than the ability to perceive. If I can see a painting, I can decide whether or not I like it. That's it. There is a certain creative artistry to communicating that perception to others, of course. That is what anyone who authors a written or oral piece must have. The greater the skill, the more coherent the presentation. Yet a critic is not a creator by nature.
I am reminded of a favorite quote of mine of Theodore Roosevelt.
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
Creation is a dramatic thing, as Theodore Roosevelt understood. It is the task of making something that was never there before. That includes changes such as democracy. The founding fathers had a mental image of how a nation could be ruled to produce the greatest good. This is why we call such men visionaries. They see something in the future that could be. They sometimes "dare greatly" to bring about that future.
The greatest creators are the ones who form a single thought, a single notion, that comprises the whole of their creation, then bring that creation into being in one act and finally let it stand on its own merits. No finishing touches, no tune ups, no tweaks. It was complete when it was set down the very first time. It's an exremely rare thing, but it does happen. People who can accomplish such things are usually assigned the moniker "prodigy".
Now consider the universe itself. Modern theory of creation declares that the universe originated in one colossally energetic event, the big bang. Once that event took place, a multi-billion year sequence of events was begun, leading to the present day and continuing into the future for an unknown period of time. Billions of years and countless stars spread across distances so vast that we cannot get our heads around them.
If you believe in God and you wish to appreciate how vast God's ability is, look at your hands. See the intricacies of your fingerprints and the dexterous control that you have of so many things about you. Then look up. At night, we are regaled with the stars. If you have a good imagination, picture the stars as they really are; they are suns as large or larger than our own, at indescribable distances. Around those suns are other planets. Some as large as Jupiter, others as small as the Earth. And on those planets, there may well be other beings who are contemplating their own hands and looking up into the night sky. Trillions of suns with how many planets with how many people, being born, living lives, growing old and dying. Cementing their own dreams into action, changing their own future bit by bit, day after day, year after year, since the beginning of time itself.
Science tells us that God created all that in a moment. I wonder what He was thinking.
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